Possibilities
by Wild Force Ranger
Summary: James Lester was not a stupid man. Sometimes he thought about that world, Cutter's world.    Because Lester was not a stupid man.


Possibilities

Sometimes Lester thinks about it.

He spent a lot of time listening to Nick Cutter. The man might have been borderline insane, but he was a genius and had an almost instinctive understanding of the anomalies and their implications. Lester has never been one to waste resources. So he rolled his eyes and sighed and looked at his watch, and listened very carefully to everything Cutter said. Especially, to everything he said about Claudia Brown.

Lester is not a stupid man. There is a place in the civil service for stupid people, and there is a place for smart people. And above them are the people smart enough to pretend to be stupid enough. The ARC project, in lesser hands, would have destroyed England by now, and yet it's still seen as a dead-end position. Lester is smart enough not to protest this. It doesn't bother him to be seen as a little man.

But sometimes he thinks about it. What if this world is not what it should be? Nick Cutter was so determined, so honestly bewildered when he stepped through that anomaly, and he clung to his story in the face of all the evidence against it. What if this world really was different?

He thinks about that Lester. According to Cutter, they had no official headquarters, no permanent military contingent – though he mentioned a Captain Ryan once or twice. The project must have been even smaller there, less well funded. He wonders how that Lester kept them going.

Cutter says the team was the same, bar Claudia Brown. Abby, Stephen, and Connor. Lester wonders at how close their worlds must have been to bring those four people together. Cutter's story of their formation matches his memory; Connor brought the sighting to Cutter's attention, they went with Stephen to check it out and met Abby there. He wonders how, in a world where a woman grew up with a different life, those four could be so similar.

Connor loves it. He talks about it whenever Cutter will, which is less and less often now, and uses long words that sound like he's making them up. Honestly, who can discuss the space/time continuum in casual conversation? Lester feels sorry for that other Lester, dealing with a Connor who, if Cutter's stories are anything to go by, was even more forward than this one. At least this Connor, as far as Lester is aware, has never offered to share body warmth with Abby.

Abby didn't change. Cutter has told him that. He didn't know her very well before, but as far as he can tell she hasn't changed. And Stephen, Stephen is still the same. Still stupidly heroic, still too brash, still too young.

Too young. They're children, all three of them. Lester wonders if that other him ever felt like a school teacher trying to rein in a group of unruly pupils. He certainly does, sometimes, and he suspects Cutter feels the same way.

It's oddly comforting. The thought that in both universes – every universe, so far as they know – there's a Lester. A Stephen. An Abby and a Connor, following on her heels. A Cutter. An ARC.

But then, that wasn't true for Claudia, whoever she was. Perhaps the next time he authorizes a mission to the past, he'll be erasing himself.

Connor has argued this from both sides dozens of times since Cutter's return. 'If you go to the past and change something so humanity never evolves, you'll never evolve, so you can't go to the past to change anything, so we will evolve, so you'll go to the past...but then again, if you go to the past, you'll simply be creating an alternate future, so the you in the past can still exist. So it is possible for you to wipe out humanity. On the other hand...' Lester is an intelligent man, but there are only so many circles he can force his thoughts around. He's not really sure Connor knows what he's talking about, either. He's probably making most of it up.

He wonders if they'd know. Did Claudia know, in the instant her past changed? Did she feel herself come apart, reforming into a new person, a whole new history and lineage?

Sometimes these thoughts weigh heavily on him. He leaves his office, stands on the balcony and looks down into the ARC. He watches Connor play with the ADD, celebrating every tiny advancement nosily. He watches Abby laugh, teasing Connor or Stephen. He watches Stephen watch them both. He watches Cutter as he slowly, against his will sometimes, grows more comfortable here.

He watches Jenny watch them. It upsets her, he knows, thinking of that could-have-been life. She ignores it, and Cutter, as much as she can.

He wonders if all the Jenny Lewises, everywhere, were once Claudia Brown. He wonders who he might become.

Then the alarm blares and his team vanish, heading off to face whatever comes through. And Lester waits, patiently, for them to come back.

He pretends he's not waiting to vanish.


End file.
